St. Paul: Noon and Stitch

There has been plenty of great basketball played by young adults wearing the St. Paul uniform through the years, but according to the Hoop Zone Hall of Fame panel, none were better than Mark Noon and Liz Stitch.

Close call at Civic Center

Most people remember that UConn and UMass played a basketball game that ended six hours before the roof of the Hartford Civic Center collapsed under the weight of 4 inches of wet snow early in the morning of Jan. 18, 1978.

Most people forget that Hartford and Amherst played the preliminary game to UConn-UMass that evening. Mark Noon was a sophomore guard for the Hawks in that game, and watching in the stands were his mother, Loretta, and his future wife, Mary, a former cheerleader at St. Paul.

“My mother called me around 6 in the morning and said the Civic Center roof collapsed,” recalled Noon, who was then 19. “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ The joke was that (UConn’s) Al Lewis brought the house down because he had an incredible game against UMass.”

Dave Hixon was an assistant coach for Amherst at that game. Thirty-one years later, he was sitting in Noon’s Farmington living room, recruiting Noon’s son, Spencer, as head coach of the Lord Jeffs. “I told my son we both dodged the Civic Center roof,” said Noon.

Spencer Noon went to Amherst, where he played two years of basketball and four years of soccer, becoming an Division III All-American.

Noon’s older son, Preston, attended UConn, where he was a practice player for the UConn women’s team.

“Geno called Preston into his office and told him, ‘You’re the type I need,'” said Mark. “He ended up guarding Maya Moore for four years.”

Tough one in state final

Considering that St. Paul lost only nine games while winning 92 during her four years at the Bristol school, it’s probably not surprising to hear the highly competitive Liz Stich say, “You tend to remember the losses more than the wins.”

One of the tougher defeats came when the Falcons made it to the 1998 Class S final during Stich’s freshman season. The pregame music filling Central Connecticut’s Kaiser Hall was by the Swedish pop band Ace of Base, but the final outcome, 47-40, was sweet music only to the ears of top-ranked Wheeler.

Stich has never forgotten. “Any time anything by that band comes on the radio,” she said, “it gets changed.”

College coaching career

In charge of the women’s program at Plymouth (N.H.) State for two years, Liz Stich has had to make adjustments in her first job as a head coach.

For one thing, she’s had to tolerate more losing than she’d like. The Panthers have gone 1-24 and 2-22 overall, 0-14 and 1-13 in the Little East, the past two seasons.

“Our record is not that great, but I have a lot of hope for our future,” said Stich. “Ten of our losses were by single digits and we’re playing with an extremely young team.”

Stich, who played for Jennifer Rizzotti at Hartford and was an assistant under Beryl Piper at Central Connecticut for four years before coming to Plymouth, has had to accept a different role off the court, too.

“At Central, I’d talk with the players about other things than basketball, life, boyfriends, whatever,” Stich explained. “As a head coach, I’ve shied away from that. That’s been difficult, but that’s my role now.”

St. Paul coach Joe Mone has no doubts Stich will succeed as a head coach. “She took over a program that was way down,” he noted. “I’ve seen a couple of their games. She has them playing hard, playing competively. They lost to the best team in the league by only seven. There’s no doubt they’re going to have the intensity level and the respect for the game that she did as a player.”